Driveway Backover Accidents

Driveway Backover Accidents Should Not Be A Problem

According to the NHTSA, backover injuries and deaths happen when someone is behind a vehicle without a driver’s knowledge while the driver is backing out. This makes it easy to understand why most of these victims are children or elderly.

With the victims being primarily children or the elderly, it is inevitable that most of these accidents involve family, friends, or neighbors. Also, because these crashes usually take place in private driveways, they are not reported in traffic-crash fatality data.

Backovers often occur to a driver’s blind spot, especially when a child is involved as they are usually not in view. So how do we prevent these accidents from happening in the first place? Well, the first step is to educate your children on why it is dangerous to play or run around running cars. Always make sure kids are properly supervised when playing outside. Always just assume kids might be present and thoroughly check your surroundings before backing up. Also it is a good idea to keep toys of the driveway so children are tempted to run and get their bike, or chalk for example. This is definitely a community effort. You can’t just worry about your kids, but all the kids in your neighborhood.

Just in September in Miami, a mother accidently ran over her 1-year-old-son who subsequently died. Accidents like these can be prevented with patience, caution and educated drivers.

Also in September it was reported that a 13-year-old accidentally backed over his grandmother. This occured after she gave him the keys to help her put her car in gear in a parking lot. This carelessness of letting a 13-year-old handle a car could have been easily prevented.